“Who Goes There?” is a book written by John W. Campbell, Jr. and copyrighted in 1948. This is basically a story about an alien creature and it’s ship that crash landed in the Antarctic around 20,000 years ago, and the subsequent discovery of it in 1948.

Using thermite, the hapless humans managed to destroy the creature’s craft which was beneath the ice. Then they found the creature in a separate area beneath the ice and carved the alien out. (Sound familiar?) They carted it away using a dogsled and soon arrived at their camp.

Naturally the creature managed to get thawed. “The Thing” is freed.

This creature exhibited unusual abilities. It could assume the form of any creature by absorbing it. With the left over mass, it’s original mass, it could go do it to another creature, so on and so on. If the humans had not managed to destroy it, it could have conceivably gone on and literally become the population of the Earth.

Another quality it had was technical genius. Able to build sophisticated machines like atomic reactors and anti-gravity. (This is the book, not the movie)

After finishing the book I was struck by the thought of how similar this creature’s procreation power was to the spread of religion. How each individual became a nondescript part of the group. All thinking the same, all behaving the same, and all with the same goals.

I continued that thought line and remembered the Old Star Trek series with James T. Kirk and Spock and what happened in one episode named “ Landru”. On planet Beta III a computer controlled an entire population. Landru had died 6000 years previously but as a means to enforce his concept of an ideal world programmed a computer for this purpose and gave it the ability to actually induce euphoria within the minds of the people and instill order. They were all part of the “Body”. Everyone walked the streets in a slow methodical manner, greeting each other with simple greetings, and wishing each other the “blessings of Landru.” All thinking the same, all behaving the same, and all with the same goals.

On, to the Borg. Wow, yet another example where everyone thought the same, behaved the same, and had all the same goals. Part people, part machine, totally cyborg. Their greatest asset, the communal mind, in the end became their greatest vulnerability. They could not function well once the communal mind link was broken. The virus consisting of the concept of self, individuality, became their downfall.

This is very much similar to what is happening to Christianity today. Many people are examining their beliefs and finding them absurd. Under close scrutiny the deception is not hard to discern, and more and more people are joining the ranks of the nonbeliever. People are finding their individuality and assuming behavior much less that of sheep.

Christianity will not go easily and is putting up one heck of a battle. They are determined to either forcefully insert religion, namely Christianity, into the schools, or by god, whoops, by golly, they will close up the public schools by demanding a voucher system to attend private schools, or assume the chore of home schooling; either of which will surely shortchange America.

With science education declining in America the rest of the world is having an easy time wresting the title of “superior technology developer” out of America’s grasp. Even Stem cell research has been hamstrung by government restrictions prompted solely by the conservative right’s demands. Evolution, proven over the span of 150 years to be unassailable, is still under attack by the ignorant, most of which have never read the author’s work.